Homework Assignment #2 — Mid-Research Proposal

HW2 is due on 11:59pm Central, Oct 20. Students are required to submit the pdf report through Brightspace. Grace period is allowed for HW2.

CS8395 is an upper level special topic research course. In this course, we focus on research in SE instead of industial practiceor specific coding techniques. Thus, the only semester-long homework assignment is to work on a research proposal (with preliminary results).

Students usually tend to work on homework assignments in the last minute (we know you do...) and many have succeeded from doing so in your undergraduate courses. However, especially if this is the first time for you to work on a formal research proposal, it will not work (ask senior PhD students in your lab: how much ahead should I start writing my research paper for a CS conference submission?). In CS8395, we want students to spend enough time to carefully think about a research idea that (1) is interesting and exciting to you and (2) meets the standards of a decent research proposal/paper. We hope this course can help get you prepared as a researcher. Thus, we split the semester-long homework into HW2 and HW3, as a forcing function for students to start early.

Specifically, students are required to submit a mid-research proposal in HW2 and a full research proposal in HW3.

Your high-level goal is to produce and submit a research proposal following the National Science Foundation (NSF) proposal style. In HW2 and 3, we will use a simplified structure (see HW2 Format and Content ). If you are interested in the full format of an official NSF proposal, you can find the details in this document (see Part I -- Chapter II).

HW2 Topic Selection

Students are encouraged to combine the knowledge, concepts, and techniques learned in this class with your own research focus (if you have any) or interests. You can also choose to improve an algorithm or tool in SE. Or, you can also choose to contribute to empirical software engineering or diveristy in SE.

More discussions and tips on how to look for a good research idea are presented in the course lectures.

HW2 Format and Content

Based on the requirements of NSF proposals, we simplify the format and content requirements for HW2. The research proposal must follow the format requirements below:

  1. Use a standard, single column format for the text.
  2. Must be at least 3 pages (excluding references) (a formal NSF proposal is 15 pages, we simplify it in this course).
  3. Font size must be either 10 or 11 points.
  4. No more than six lines of text within a vertical space of one inch.
  5. Paper size must be standard letter paper size (8 1/2 by 11").

Just like writing any peer-reviewed publications in computer science, you are highly recommended to use the provided LaTex template. As graduate students in CS, you are highly recommended to use LaTeX. While some people perfer LaTeX environment on their local machines, Overleaf is a very popular online LaTeX editor that supports collaborative edits.

The HW2 mid-research proposal must contain (but not limited to) the following content:

  1. The first page must contain (no longer than one page):
    • Proposal title
    • Proposal summary/overview
    • Intellectual Merit
    • Broader Impact
    2. Since HW2 is a prototype for your final proposal, we focus on the background introduction and problem selection in HW2. More importantly, we expect the students to lead a discussion with the class in their mid-proposal presentation and seek for advice in class. Later students will integrate the advice from the discussion and work on their final report (HW3). Thus, we will require specific format for HW2, and suggest students to include the following sections:
  2. Introduction
  3. Background and Related Work
  4. Problem Statement
  5. Proposed Experiments/Solutions/Methodologies (this section can be short and abstract)
  6. References

Presentation Format for Mid-Research Proposal

Based on the total number of presentations for mid-research proposal in one lecture, each presentation is expected to follow the rules:

  1. The presentation is 8min talk + 2min Q&A. It should be no longer than 10 min in total (this is decided based on the total number of teams we have).
  2. The presenters must email the slides to the instructor and the GSI no later than 11:59pm the day before the presentation day. Any team that is late to email their slides will be applied with a 20% penalty to their final HW2 score. This is to avoid technical issues of switching computers and also save time since we have many teams (all presenters will use the instructor's computer for presentation).
  3. The presenter(s) is encouraged to lead Q&A to collect feedback and suggestions for your proposed work.
  4. Same as paper presentations, every audience will receive a link for an online evaluation form on Piazza. Students are required to finish and submit this form by the end of 5pm the same day. If you are late for the submission, you receive 0 points for this evaluation task. Also, there will be a passcode question in the form to check attendance: you get 0 points if you get the code wrong (the code will be shared in the lecture of the day).This evaluation form is easier than the evaluation form for paper presentations: the audience only needs to provide comments/suggestions for the proposed work in the free-text questions.

The evalution criteria for the presentation is similar to Paper Presentations. However, the criteria for the content are based on (1) If the research problem is clearly stated (2) if the proposed experiments/solutions/methodologies are reasonable. Since this is the mid-research proposal, (1) should weigh much more than (2) in the evaluation (80% vs. 20%).

HW2 and HW3: Proposal Examples

Below are some examples for research proposals that follow the simplified NSF requirements we describe above. The examples are 15 pages (HW2 requires 3 pages at least and HW3 requires exactly 7 pages).

  • Improving Programing Support for Hardware Accerlerators Through Automata Processing Abstractions. By Dr. Kevin Angstadt (currently a professor at St.Lawrence University.)
  • Transparent System Introspection in Support of Analyzing Stealthy Malware By Dr. Kevin Leach (currently a professor at Vanderbilt University.)
  • Understanding User Cognition: from Everyday Behavior and Spatial Ability to Code Writing and Review By Dr. Yu Huang (currently a professor at Vanderbilt University.)

    • How to Submit HW2

    HW2: The in-progress mid-research proposal must be submitted in PDF format through Brightspace. In HW2 submission, students must describe the motivation, background, proposed research problems and a brief plan for methodology. If you are working in teams, you must include the information of both team members.